Bernie’s Heart Problems

I’m guessing the biggest negative impact will be when the details of his treatment leak out….presumably involved no wait time and the best gold-plated care money can buy. Not a good look for someone pushing universal healthcare.

I always enjoyed listening to Bernie and have a lot of respect for him. I hope he has a speedy recovery and stays active.

When did Warren ever cave to money, policywise?

I’m with Tulsi Gabbard for President because she is young, she is clear on her policies and she’s an antiwar veteran. I’m also an antiwar veteran (Vietnam). But to me the main thing is that she is young. All us old baby boomers need to STFU and go away. We had our chance and we blew it. All you need to do is look at the baby boomer Presidents: Clinton, GW Bush, Obama and Trump. All of them are neoliberal charlatans, liars and war criminals who sold out to the banks, the military and the corporations. They threw us all under the bus for bags of shekels and a sweet retirement. It is time for a change.

Adds weight to my decision not to lend support to anyone older than me. I may (no doubt will) again find myself voting for someone I don’t support, choke down the lesser of evils, that’s nothing new, but getting behind anyone over 65 isn’t gonna’ happen.

Dore is just another radio ranter, no credibility. Gabbard is a Republican, as is Williamson; Yang is a tech-bro who apparently has found a way to fudge his polling. Wolves indeed.

This actually provides Sanders with an excellent opportunity to exit gracefully.

Effem:
Sanders is a sitting U.S. Senator. I have no idea if they have to use the marketplace(yuck!!) set up by the ACA or not. He was treated in Las Vegas because that is apparently where he was when he needed treatment. If it was solely up to Sanders he would make sure everyone was able to access the healthcare he is able to. We don’t live in a workers paradise, yet.

I see this as more of a hiccup. Stenting someone is a pretty minimal procedure. As I said in the last thread, barring any complication, he should be good to go in a week. He could be out of the hospital today or tomorrow. He received the care that pretty much anyone would at a major hospital. At most and not even sure this was the case, depending on the time of day and level of symptoms, he might have gotten a couple hours jump in the scheduling of the procedure and he might get an extra night for observation. That’s about it. Mostly this is about billing. Sanders with Medicare (and really anyone with a good Medicare Plus policy) will be covered.

It’s not one of those newfangled hackable stents, is it? If it is, watch out. If it is, hopefully it comes equipped with triple firewall protection.

What this does indicate is what was always true given Sanders’ age: who his VP is matters a great deal and that VP cannot be chosen for “balance” but must be someone who shares Sanders’ politics, since the chance they’ll wind up as President is higher than normal.

This is pretty much verbatim what I said to my wife yesterday evening. Although, I must say, Warren every day appears more and more like an establishment trojan horse as a failsafe in case Biden doesn’t work out for whatever reason. I don’t trust her and she’s given us many reasons not to trust her thus far. This election is well beyond “anyone but Trump.” We need radical and we need radical NOW. Hell, we needed radical three decades ago but instead got the status quo business as usual.

A better pick for Bernie’s vp would be Greta Thunberg. I know she’s a bit young, but she’s sufficiently radical & admirably merciless. She can lead a Maoist-like purge of the old guard dead weight that needs to go and go fast. I don’t care if she’s not an American citizen. The constitution obviously no longer applies, so screw it.

Yes, Bernie’s health and age are serious concerns,, as is the health and age of several other candidates.

There is no evidence that stenting prolongs life. The reason stenting is often performed in the U.S. (not so much in other countries) is … wait for it … because it’s profitable. And in Bernie’s case, if he had elected for a quadruple bypass instead of stent, he would have been out of the race.

Given the non-existent performance record of stents, and given Bernie’s advanced age, the chances of Bernie being healthy for 5 more years are slim.

We probably need a constitutional amendment for maximum age. In the meantime, no one can take candidate Bernie seriously (or candidate Biden, or candiate Trump, and Liz is no spring chicken).

We’ve had too many zombie geezers in the White House. Age matters.

Do Stents Really Help

I hope Sanders recovers well and then paces himself to stay safely at or under his physical load-limit. He is pushing an agenda parts of which I find hopeful and useful. Warren is doing a tolerable fraction of that. Gabbard is doing “the same” in different subject areas.

There is a saying: It isn’t War till the target fights back. I doubt the Catfood Democrats will permit Sanders to get nominated. But if he does, I hope his VP pick says ” the target will fight back”. I think the best No Compromise No Mercy No Surrender VP choice would be Gabbard.
If a Sanders/Gabbard ticket were to be elected, Gabbard could immediately go into hiding from the inevitable assassination-attemps , possibly in Cheney’s “undisclosed secure location”. Her military background might give her some skills in personal physical security maintainance.

The “Class Enemy” might be less likely to assassinate President Sanders knowing that they would then get President Gabbard and realizing how difficult Gabbard would be to assassinate.
And wondering how heavy a personal-health-and-life price some of her comrades-in-arms might make the assassins and assassin-senders pay.

So a Sanders/Gabbard ticket would be ideal.

Thinking in terms of generational change really only works with the post Great Depression then World War II so-called “baby boom generation.” It sort of works because of the starkness between the depression of the birth rate followed by the suddenness of the explosion of the birth rate. All the other generational categories are pretty weak artificial derivatives.

The age of the candidate doesn’t mean much to me. It is the “age” of their ideas. If we went by the age of their ideas, Biden and Buttigieg would be octogenarians. And Sanders would be a twenty something.

At the same time, I don’t care that much about people’s pasts as long as they are past. It doesn’t matter to me that Kamala Harris was an asshole prosecutor. What matters is that, in the here and now, she can’t take a stand and stick with it. She triangulates like a Clinton. She’s for Medicare for All …ten, nine, eight… oh wait, not really. That’s not leadership. That’s being led by your campaign consultants –down the tubes. Warren was a Republican until 1996 when she was 47 years old. Problem is I don’t see her as having changed much from then. Rather the Republican party moved away from her and further to the right. I don’t see her as moving to the left. She’s a technocrat, not a New Dealer, not a progressive. And so far as I can see not a leader.

I went back and watched the whole vid. Damning, but biased. Do a YouTube search on “banksters against warren” to get a different impression.

I have a gut feel she’ll take corp $ and then double cross them. YMMV.

Sorry for the off topic. The September jobs report came out today. Seasonally unadjusted, as in what really happened, September is a month where, with the beginning of the school year, the private sector loses jobs and the public sector gains them. The result is a moderate increase in total jobs overall (called total nonfarm). I have been saying for months that 2019 is a bad year for jobs. The September data kicks it into the horrible category. So in the private sector (a major indicator of the strength of the economy), 618,000 jobs were lost. This is almost identical with the previous two years, and about 200,000 worse than the three years before that. The big story is in net job growth (Jan-Sept job creation minus the previous end of the year dropoff). Net private sector job creation so far for 2019 is 949,000. This compares to 1,889,000 in my benchmark year 2014 (a year of solid, not spectacular, growth), or 940,000 fewer.

Adding in the public sector (with this month’s big influx of school jobs) or total nonfarm, 362,000 jobs were gained in September, again similar to the last two years. But net job creation for the year is just 746,000, compared with 1,520,000 in 2014, or 774,000 fewer, or just 49% of what happened in 2014. Not to be overly technical, but this sucks. Seems like they can’t even create crap jobs anymore.

Ten Bears

The product of mid-fifties promiscuous pregnancy and sixties serial Southern California divorce I would argue, Stewart, that there are three distinct generations within the so-called “boomer” generation, and five separate class distinctions. And let us not forget the Young Republicans, several of whom are running as democrats both yesterday and today. With several more copycats.

Oh, I agree with you, Ten Bears. Wholeheartedly. The “Baby Boomer” generation is way too big to be a meaningful construct–if there’s a privileged caste among them, it’s the people born say in 1947 or 1948 (if you define it stating then, and definitions are all over the place) who came of age in the 60s…but then again they had Vietnam. By the time my generation got into school you could no longer be an English or social science major and have that ‘good job’ waiting for you, opportunities had dried up and the cost of universities were rising.

I was in college when Reagan was elected and neoliberal policies were being enacted, and know for damn sure the PTB weren’t listening to me or people my age. At the time, I saw Reagan’s election as a disaster from which the country might never recover from back then, and I sadly conclude I wasn’t engaging in youthful exaggeration. Moreover, all my adult life when the country has been on this neoliberal track, I’ve been governed by people older than me, with the sole exception of Obama. And in fact, it’s quite possible that the two major party candidates in 2020 will STILL be way older than me, and just as out of touch–Trump and Biden. *And I’m closing in on retirement age*.

So get kinda frustrated being told that my generation had the good life while running things into the ground when all my life I’ve been governed by people considerably older than me.

And let us not forget the Young Republicans,

Oh, I remember the YAFFers and the Young College Republicans and the Alex Keatons back in my college days. However, let me throw up this caveat about class you mentioned–the two that I remember most vividly where these–one was the son hailing from a distinguished family pedigree, and the the other–who wrote articles in the student newspaper, signed–‘John Doe IIIrd’ (not his real name, save for the ‘IIIrd’ part)–was an economics grad student who repeatedly quoted French fascists like Charles Maurraus approvedly. I googled the latter a few years back and found him working at some conservative think-tank sucking off the Federal guv’mint tit, no doubt. But the point is that these both came from well-heeled backgrounds.

What about AOC? She would be 30 or 31 on Jan 20, 2021 and old enough to be V.P.